is it somehow possible to exclude TrackArtist tags from Artist/All Artists indexes in the indexTags setting?

TrackArtist is a very useful tag with classical music and especially opera, where you usually have multiple soloists, specific only to a certain track(s). However, it creates a mess when browsing the library.

I have indexTags set as following: indexTags=Artist, Date, Genre, All Artists, Composer, Conductor, Orchestra, Edition, #AudioQuality

Values from TrackArtist appear in both Artist and All Artists indexes.

The Artist index includes AlbumArtist tags for albums that have this tag and Artist tags for albums that don't have an AlbumArtist tag. The All Artists index includes Artist tags for all tracks. Neither of these indexes includes TrackArtist tags. Have you perhaps used the aliasTags property to map TrackArtist to something else?

(03-01-2019 19:14)simoncn Wrote: The Artist index includes AlbumArtist tags for albums that have this tag and Artist tags for albums that don't have an AlbumArtist tag. The All Artists index includes Artist tags for all tracks. Neither of these indexes includes TrackArtist tags. Have you perhaps used the aliasTags property to map TrackArtist to something else?

(04-01-2019 08:24)simoncn Wrote: With these settings, MinimServer is not reading TrackArtist tags. Are you perhaps referring to Artist tags on your tracks?

Dear Simon,

many thanks for the help! I now checked the metadata of the files with metaflac cmdline tool and indeed I found that the tags are set as ARTIST, not as TRACKARTIST. This was caused by the mapping of the tagging software I use (metadatics), which apparently by default maps ARTIST into TRACKARTIST... The GUI, however, still shows the tag you're editing as TRACKARTIST, but saves it as ARTIST.

(04-01-2019 16:48)simoncn Wrote: Thanks for this information. I am surprised that Metadatics is changing the name of the tag in this way. You could configure MinimServer not to read ARTIST tags but this might cause other problems.

As a first step, try adding AlbumArtist to the list of tag names in indexTags. Does the AlbumArtist index give you the browsing experience that you want?

I just changed settings of Metadatics to map TRACKARTIST correctly, then re-created all the tags by copying them, added TRACKARTIST into itemTags and Artist.displayFormat and now everything is fine. It wasn't a lot of work, as fortunately I don't have that many albums where the tag is applied

I found this discussion a but confusing since the ARTIST field represents a track artist, i.e Artist/TrackArtist can be used interchangeably in Gui, but most tag formats store as ARTIST, none store as TRACKARTIST.

(08-01-2019 21:15)paultaylor Wrote: I found this discussion a but confusing since the ARTIST field represents a track artist, i.e Artist/TrackArtist can be used interchangeably in Gui, but most tag formats store as ARTIST, none store as TRACKARTIST.

I wouldn't say that ARTIST necessarily represents the TrackArtist. Especially in classical music, you might want to sort your library in a way that the album is tagged in the ARTIST tag by the composer of the work. But if you have a soloist, which is often the case, then I prefer not to add it into the ARTIST tag, as the main indexing gets polluted from all the soloists. Hence I prefer to have it in a separate tag.

(08-01-2019 21:15)paultaylor Wrote: I found this discussion a but confusing since the ARTIST field represents a track artist, i.e Artist/TrackArtist can be used interchangeably in Gui, but most tag formats store as ARTIST, none store as TRACKARTIST.

I wouldn't say that ARTIST necessarily represents the TrackArtist. Especially in classical music, you might want to sort your library in a way that the album is tagged in the ARTIST tag by the composer of the work. But if you have a soloist, which is often the case, then I prefer not to add it into the ARTIST tag, as the main indexing gets polluted from all the soloists. Hence I prefer to have it in a separate tag.

Ok thanks for your clarification, but the ARTIST tag is meant to represents the artists at track level (whatever that means), whereas ALBUMARTIST represents the main artists at album level. I agree deciding what the track artist should be for Classical is difficult, I store the conductor/main performer and orchestra for ARTIST, I don't add composer but they go into the COMPOSER tag. Then I have separate tags for PERFORMER, ORCHESTRA ectera.